Brilliant

The waiting is over - this week I agreed terms with an employer, and I start work on the 19th May. After five months of not working, this is an overwhelming relief. We're not entirely out of the woods yet though, as there are bills to be paid at the end of this month which my pro-rated pay won't cover, but hopefully a client for whom I've been doing a little work back in the UK will actually bother to pay me for it at some point during this month.

I don't think I'd realised quite how much being unemployed had affected me. Friends of mine have told me in the past that my job (whatever it was at the time) was always far too important to me, and it's true to an extent that my sense of self-worth is entirely wrapped up in what I do for a living. So to be out of work, to me, is to have no social worth. Entertainingly, I don't view other people like this - this rule only applies to me, you understand. The Kiwi and I had a celebratory curry on Thursday night and I realised that I was smiling properly for the first time in ages; smiling with total happiness, without that lurking feeling that had been telling me up to this point that, until I had a job, I had nothing to smile about.

So I suppose there should be a learning experience here in finding self-worth in places other than the workplace, but I suspect I'll not really take it on board. This is the usual way of things.

And what of the job? Well, suffice it to say it's in the insurance industry, and involves me forming and implementing a strategy for the online channel. Currently the online arm of the business is... me, but over time it'll need to grow. The main challenge in moving a mainly offline business to a true multi-channel one is predominantly a cultural one, and although the top level of this organisation is open to the concept, it'll be convincing the troops that'll be the 'pushing water uphill' element of this particular engagement, I suspect.

I'm going to remain coy in this forum about who it is, so I can be reasonably open about how it's going, but most of you probably know. Very excited about starting indeed, they're a good bunch of people from what I can see, with a very clear and pragmatic view on the next steps for their business. Prior to that, though, I have a week of genuine holiday to get through, so with that, it's back to my baking... on which more later!